What I do: Part Deux

A year ago at our first ALF Weekend (October 2014) we did an exercise where we each mapped our work by answering the following questions, all in an ALC/ALF context:

What do I do?

What gives me juice?

What do I want to do?

What actions will I take to make these things happen?

A couple weeks later, I wrote this blog to expand and add to this exercise with all of the trello data I was generating for myself. At the end of that post, I made a list of the things I wanted “more of” in my work. Here’s that list with updated notes under each item:

Being the point-of-contact for the ALC Network or the ALC(s) I’m working with

This has been working out. The best part is that for each of the domains I’m holding (ALC-NYC, Mosaic, ALF Summer, and Network), I’m now sharing the point-of-contact responsibilities with other people. There’s a larger team in NYC now and @bear has been working on enrollment there so we’ve been sharing that. ALC Mosaic has an Admissions WG that shares contact form submissions, though I’ve been coherence holding for most of it lately, though @lacy handles all things Roots, which is fantastic. I partnered with @bear for the entire scope of ALF Summer, and with the new ALC Membership model and Startups WG, I’ve been sharing this responsibility with Bear, Drew, and Liam. A major project on the horizon related to this is implementing a significant CRM system.

Communicating about ALCs at Parent Interest Nights, with visitors, current parents, etc.

I wrote this a year ago, and I think I wound up clocking 14 Parent Interest Nights by the end of last school year, so this definitely happened. With Bear handling this in NYC now, I’ve had less of it going on, as things have been slower on the enrollment front for Mosaic, too. Still doing tours for visitors at Mosaic. I hope to always have a home-base ALC, which should be Mosaic for the foreseeable future. This is something I may not want to be responsible for forever, but certainly can easily step in and do and have a significant impact.

Sharing the story and big picture vision of ALCs through emails, G-hangouts, public talks and meetups

This is definitely happening through my work with the Startups WG, supporting new ALC Startups and doing online office hours. I’m excited to be doing more of this as we get our infrastructure and processes automated, which will allow us to take on more new members. I did a talk for an Agile/Kanban meetup in NYC, and a “What If” talk that was kinda “meh”, but gave me practice in the process, and most importantly helped me write a decent blog post about schools being collaborative.I also connected with John Miller of

Agile Classroomswhich led to a call with a dozen other folks from around the world who use Agile in Edu. I’ve joined a core team that will be planning an international gathering where we’ll write an Agile In Education Manifesto. I’m pretty excited about this project and about representing ALC, and specifically, Self-Directed Learning as the core of anything Agile in Edu.I’ve recently been connecting with some of the folks from AlternativesToSchool.com and sharing more about ALC with Peter Gray, which feels really good. I’m working on setting things up for him to some speak at a few ALCs in early 2016.

Developing and maintaining the organizational flows of the school(s) — Assembly, working groups (though doing this for two schools simultaneously is not sustainable)

I have largely removed myself from this in NYC, which as the second half of the statement mentions, it super important. There are things I can do for multiple schools at the same time that aren’t too taxing and are still high-leverage (such as, manage tuition invoicing). Actively managing and moving workflows forward for one school is hard enough for me right now with all the network-level projects I’m involved with. I’m still the “Director” for ALC-NYC this year, but I’ve mostly passed off a lot of community managing responsibilities and @abbyo and @ryanshollenberger are taking them on nicely. I am still making sure Assembly meetings get scheduled and that I’m there for them, but other than that, I’m simply not around enough to make sure working group projects are moving. That said, I still hold coherence for all things financial, which means the Finance WG.

Supporting, coaching and mentoring facilitators — I love doing this and feel effective in my ability to support and invite new levels of leadership from the facilitators who are on the ground with the kids each day

Yes. I don’t think this will ever stop, and that’s fine. Supporting other adults in a coach-y kind-of way is a sweet spot for me, so I’m good with that. One thing that has been evolving with this is that a lot of the folks I was supporting last year are now in much larger leadership roles and are doing a lot of this for other people now. Coaching facilitators has continued for me mostly through my work with new ALC Startups, though there is still regular and important collaboration taking place with both ALF teams form NYC and Mosaic.

Developing and managing the logistics and communications of the Admissions process — I’ve learned how important it is to be organized in the is process and clear in the communications around it (enrollment contracts, tuition policies, cultural norms of the school, etc.) and I feel good about my ability to add a lot of value here

As mentioned already, I’m sharing this with @bear in NYC, which has worked out pretty well. I continue to find new levels of trust with Bear and it has felt good to share this work with him, as it is a domain I can easily feel overprotective of (and sometimes for good reason). I’m not sure who will handle this longterm for NYC, but it may be a combination of @bear and @sarataleff, with me available for support. I have been doing this for Branches at Mosaic and that’s been working well. @nancy and I have been learning and re-learning the importance of being clear with prospective parents about what we do and don’t do. We are definitely developing in our capacities and clarity in this important part of growing a community and culture.

Culture hacking! I thoroughly enjoy inventing and evolving tools and practices. The trick here for me is being able to spend enough time engaged with the kids to do this effectively. I definitely want more intentional time for this.

Haha! It’s fun to read these from a year ago. This is still very accurate. I really enjoy culture hacking and have definitely been doing some of it — ALF Summer was a great forum for it. It’s kind of a tough spot sometimes because I don’t want to impose or step on facilitator toes when I’m not actually spending the time facilitating with kids everyday, so I mostly look for opportunities and invitations to make suggestions and culture hack with my facilitator teams. That said, I’m around the ALCs so much it is easy to pick up on things and trust levels are high with the staff in general, so I still do a fair amount of this.

One culture hack, really a tool adaptation, that I’m really excited about came from @nancy earlier this year at Mosaic. The first ∆-Up meeting or two of the year were a little challenging with as many as 22 kids in the room and too many topics to discuss and potential solutions to implement. She came up with the idea of having small groups self-organize around three or four “Awareness” topics and come up with a proposed solution, then the small groups report back their idea to the larger group and barring any major issues with it, we put it in “Implemented” and try it for the week. This ∆-up hack solved a lot of immediate problems, but I’m most stoked about it because of its potential to support scaling ∆-up meetings for large groups. I will likely write a separate post about this.

ALF Summer 2015 was pretty magical. It took a ton of work to plan and prepare — just interviewing all of the applicants took months. We grew our network tremendously and we learned A LOT about what we do well and what we can improve on to make trainings more effective. The feedback we got from everyone that participated was overwhelmingly positive. Growing the ALC Network and strengthening our facilitator relationships is the main intent, but seeing how ALF Summer really transformed some new folk’s lives is the cherry on top. I expect I’ll want to be doing this work for several more years before it is something I’ll want to move on from.For ALF Summer 2016, we are already looking at two 3-4 week sessions, one on the East Coast and one out west.

Develop and implement (with lots of help) the big picture vision for ALC Network website — a social network of purpose

I just got off a call with @drew about this very thing. I don’t have the technical skills or the time to be the one doing the actual building of these online tools, but I have continued to partner with @drew in making sure things are moving forward with our online platform (albeit slowly). I talk to people about this a lot and whenever I meet others interested in similar things, I’m sharing the endless possibilities I see for online collaboration that directly supports physical SDL communities. This is really exciting frontiers, so I’ll continue to make sure these conversations happen and we are investing where we can in making our online tools more and more useful.

In the original exercise we did during ALF Weekend 2014, my list of “What do I want to do (that I’m not already doing)?” included the following:

To help transform current schools or communities into ALCs

I suppose this happened as we began collaborating with @liam and Endor, which was already a learning community of un-schoolers before becoming an ALC. Definitely more of this coming…

Help start / sustain ALCs in new places

I’ve been supporting new ALC Startups through our membership process, but I haven’t had the time to go somewhere and join a startup team in any significant way. I still want to do some of this in the future, but I’m not exactly sure how it will look.

To communicate our project and its emerging potential to the World

Yes, this is happening in small ways, but I definitely want more of it. I’m most stoked about the Agile in Edu manifesto project that I believe will wind up being pretty important.

Bring ALC Social DNA to other communities

Our army of ALFs are definitely doing this, but I haven’t had too much time for it myself outside of the obvious ways it is already happening through our network expansion.

Bring ALC Social DNA to public schools

YES! It may not be a coincidence how far down the list this is, because honestly, I thought it would be years before this happened. It only took a year before we were able make an impression and connect with Jamaal Bowman, an extremely passionate principal at CASA Middle School in the Bronx. Jamaal is all about child-centered, love-based culture, and self-directed learning. He’s got major obstacles to overcome but he is making a lot of amazing things happen, and as a principal with courage, has a fair amount of latitude.

Mostly @bear and @drew will be doing the work for this initial consulting project with CASA, though I’ll be able to attend the initial observation and meetings with the staff. We will be working with them to introduce ALC tools and practices into their “Genius Hour”, a time for kids to explore their own interests and research topics of their choosing. The teachers are needing support in shifting from “teacher mode” to “facilitator” and so we’re excited to come learn with them and see what kind of support they need to amplify their students’ agency.

To figure out how to effectively scale our model & network

This continues to be significant and exciting work. This summer we took major strides in developing ALF Membranes that help us scale our organization with trust as the foundation and the social DNA. To do this, we have to continue to be real about who has what knowledge and abilities and who does what work well, naturally. We need an organizational model that is fluid and gives people the space to do work quickly and effectively and for decisions to be made because people are trusted to make them. We also need the organization to allow for new people to access it and move into it with clarity and purpose. The membranes are partly for protecting and holding coherence, but also for making possibilities for participation clear and available. This coming week at ∆-Up I’m proposing we implement an ALC Network Organizational Charter that I’ve been working on. The Charter mostly clarifies definitions of things and makes the creation of working groups and project work more explicit and clear.

We’d like to have the ALF site refreshed by January 2016 with a lot of info about how our ALF Community is structured and how to begin participating, as well as info about previous ALF Summer programs and upcoming ones for next summer.